Places to Find Great Partnering Opportunities

A great way to find partnering relationships that will benefit you is through referrals from clients. As an example, you may be taking on a new client and find yourself meeting a deeply-niched expert. Invite this person to lunch or coffee. The goal is to propose a situation in which you can get together and talk about your clients and which might be potential mutual clients. When you’ve proven your abilities to each other on a mutual client account, partnering in the future is all but solidified.

When a new client introduces you to a partnering opportunity, jump on it.

Partnering Relationships Take Effort

Partnering opportunities won’t just appear magically. You need to be active about seeking out partnering opportunities. This means you have to go to the chamber of commerce and talk to people that say they are consultants. Set yourself apart by defining your strengths.

Everyone else might be saying they do PC hardware, software, LANs and service. Because these are pretty general categories, you may have a hard time deciding whether or not there is an issue of competition. Ask questions and be specific about what you do to find out which consultants are the best candidates for partnering in your area.

Keep an Eye Out for Specialists

You need to explain to others that you are looking for something unique when it comes to partnering opportunities. If you plan to be a generalist, you need to find specialists. You can look at the Websites of people in your local market to find potential partners as well. Still, meeting them face-to-face is your best option.

The Bottom Line about Partnering

Meeting people in person at a channel event or user group meeting or through a mutual client are great ways to find potential partnering opportunities.

Submitted By: Joshua Feinberg

How Does Partnering Help Your Computer Consulting Business?

Partnering is a way to help small business computer consulting firms do their best with virtual IT services. Three benefits give partnering a real edge.

Advantage #1: Broadening Your Skills

When you use partnering, you can increase the skills you can offer to prospects and existing clients and offer a much more complete solution than without it. When selling to non-technical small business owners, you need partnering in order to simplify virtual IT. Small businesses don’t want to work with six different firms to get what they need. They want one contact point and one person to be accountable.

When you use partnering, you know you can handle clients’ issues yourself or rely on external resources from non-competing tech providers.

Advantage #2: Increase Your Sales Force

You increase your sales force when you use partnering very quickly and efficiently. If another tech provider recommends you for a job he/she is already on, you are as good as sold. Getting this type of referral is almost better than being referred by an accountant, because you are being referred by someone that is already a trusted tech provider.

When you use partnering, you eliminate the problems about price because you are not dealing with a buyer that is price sensitive. You are coming in highly recommended.

Advantage #3: Partnering Can Give You One-Fifth of Your Income

With partnering, 21 percent of your annual revenue can be taken care of. You have to get serious about partnering if you want to get a real opportunity that can help advance your business.

Blogged By: Joshua Feinberg